Via Usatoday.com:
Ask George Lucas what he thinks about the forthcoming Star Wars movie – the first one the series creator has not had a hand in – and he morphs into sagacious Obi-wan Kenobi.
“I’m very eager to see what they’ve done with it,” Lucas tells USA TODAY. “You know, I’m not going to be around for 100 years. You reach the age of 70, and you understand it’ll take a decade to do a group of these new movies. So it’s time to realize, Star Wars needs someone else.”
Three years ago, Lucas, 71, shifted from directing and producing to philanthropy and fatherhood – he and his wife Melody Hobson, 44, had a daughter, Everest, in 2013 – after selling his empire, Lucasfilm, to Disney for $4 billion.
But the Northern California icon has another legacy that might rival Star Wars: Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects company he founded 40 years ago in order to move a far-out space saga from his imagination to the big screen.
Over four decades, ILM not only has provided increasingly seamless effects for the six-film series, but also created indelible movie moments ranging from the rampaging dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to the monster wave in The Perfect Storm. To date, ILM has contributed effects to some 320 films and won 16 Oscars.
Our exclusive conversation with Lucas, which is edited for brevity, ranged from the dawn of special effects (a money-sucking necessity) to its current business state (fragile in the U.S.).
USA TODAY: Describe technology’s role in movie making?
Lucas: “It’s the means to an end, which is telling a story. Take the first cave paintings. You had someone making drawings with charcoal, then someone added color with an ochre rock. In cinema, the most technological of art forms, there were stories you could not tell. So you try and come up with solutions.”
USA TODAY: What was the challenge with the first Star Wars movie?
Lucas: “At that point in time, the tech pinnacle was 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the problem was you couldn’t pan. Now (director Stanley) Kubrick wanted a quiet movie, but I was telling a space fantasy. So (special effects pioneer) John Dykstra had to come up with a new technology that allowed lots of camera moves – pans, cuts, tilts. I had to start a company from scratch to make Star Wars.”
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